La Primavera Ristorante

La Primavera was nothing short of spectacular. From the ambiance to the simple menu, the wine selection and service. Everyone went out of their way to make us feel special and welcomed. The location is away from the crowded downtown while being 5 minutes away from it and there's plenty of parking. Now to their food. Perfectly balanced dishes, best ingredients, freshly made pasta, perfect execution and plating. Once of the best restaurants in Europe without a doubt.

Worst restaurant in Reykjavík Hi there, my name is Jökull, Im a local of Reykjavík and I’ve been to most of the restaurants in the city. I can unequivocally say La Primavera is the worst one. A sudden decision to go out on a friday, most of downtown is already booked, so I look for something near the docks. 4.5 stars, italian, what could possibly go wrong? The menu didn’t look like a menu for italian food, it was one of those menus where they list 3 of the ingredients as a course name. We ponder this conundrum a bit and I jokingly say: “there’s a kebab place close by you know…” Bread was boring, tasteless, no salt provided. Italy is known for a it’s warm fresh white bread, why am I being served cold coarse sourdough? Appetiser was a salad to share, not because we’re that kind of people but because that’s the only starter that sounded like food. It was the most chaotic and uninviting salad I have ever had, with peaches and whipped ricotta it was only one ingredient away from being a nice desert. The main courses: Carbonara and a shellfish pasta. Okay this is getting a bit ridiculous, two more bland and unappealing dishes, I make better carbonara at home and I’m not that good in the kitchen. Honestly the AI could do a better job, it’s carbonara, how complicated could it be? Im not sure what to say about the seafood pasta, it looked very bad, and neither tasted like seafood nor pasta. For reference it’s the black mess in a bowl in the accompanying photos. For these 3 courses and two drinks I paid 178 dollars. No discount even though we barely touched the food. The waiters knew we didn’t like the food, but the didn’t approach us and ask. We got up to pay and told them we were not happy and they said sorry, and charged the full amount. I wont tell you where to go to explore the culinary city of Reykjavík, there’s so many decent places. But please, go anywhere else than La Primavera. Reykjavík is expensive, and quality is generally really high. We had a kebab on the way home. Unfortunate foreshadowing.

Best dinner we had in Iceland. Came here to celebrate my wife’s birthday. We ordered the carbonara and the veal with spaghetti, both were excellent. The carbonara was the best I’ve ever had. Service was excellent and the ambience was great.

I only came here twice for food & fun festival and both times the food was obviously delicious, but the attention to detail of the staff made the difference. Everyone was professional and there were no cheap teenager staff in sight. Had a wonderful experience with top notch service!

We came here based on the recommendation from Netflix’s Somebody Feed Phil. This restaurant had delicious seafood and everything was top notch and elegant. Our server was very knowledgeable about wine pairings and suggested the perfect bottle of white to go with our feast. Reservations recommended.

Great Italian restaurant off the beaten path. Fresh pasta which was delicious. Everything we ate was great. A bit more classy dress seemed to be preferred as we got some side eye in our winter gear.

Out of our whole trip, I could say without a doubt that this was the worst restaurant in all of Reykjavík. It wasn’t busy and food still took over an hour to be served, which was missing items and was horrible. We got the seafood linguine and veal carbonara, which was hilariously bland, seriously a block of salt would’ve tasted better. Linguine was alright but after waiting for over an hour it still was missing the lobster - which came after we were done eating. Our server only checked in on us three times before the food arrived and never came back. One time for water, second for wine, third for bread and appetizer, then a whole hour until a food runner brought our meals. I mean that veal felt like it was stale, not seasoned, and old - it wasn’t even hot! Had to comment again it was pretty funny how bad it was. The other issue was that the restaurant was unbelievably hot, even in my thin sweater I was sweating which caused me and my wife to be very uncomfortable. They apologized for the long waits and could see how upset we were and still charged full price ($184). We even rushed home from our day trip to Kirkjufell to make our reservation, and like we said many times we should’ve just canceled.

This restaurant was elegant and the food was delicious with beautiful presentation. La Primavera was very accommodating of our large group and variety of dietary needs. I highly recommend the mozzarella di bufala with marinated tomatoes and nectarines. I also had a delicious vegetarian pasta dish. The tiramisu was absolutely decadent.